Read more
This book is about the politics of economic ideas and technocratic economic governance, focusing on the Office for Budget Responsibility. It also analyses the changing political economy of British capitalism's relationship to the European and global economies in the face of the global financial crisis, Brexit and COVID.
List of contents
- 1: Embattled Technocratic Governance: The Office for Budget Responsibility from the Crash to COVID
- 2: UK Fiscal Politics and Macroeconomic Policy Rules Since the 1990s
- 3: The British Model of Capitalism and the Politics of Growth
- 4: The OBR and the Politics of Technocratic Fiscal Governance
- 5: The OBR, Fiscal Forecasting, and the Politics of Economic Method
- 6: Narrating the Economy - Constructing the Crash and its Legacy
- 7: The OBR and the Politics of Forecasting Brexit Effects
- 8: COVID Changes Everything - 'Sound' Economic Policy and the Historical Contingency of Economic Knowledge
- 9: Conclusion - The OBR and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance in Hard Times
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Ben Clift is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His research and teaching interests integrate comparative and international political economy. He received his PhD from the Sheffield University in 2000. Before joining Warwick, he held lectureships at Sheffield and Brunel Universities. He has been research fellow at Sciences-Po, Paris and the University of Oxford. In 2018 he won a prestigious Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. He has published widely on comparative capitalisms, the IMF, the politics of economic ideas, and the political economy of economic patriotism in many leading journals.
Summary
This book is about the politics of economic ideas and technocratic economic governance, focusing on the Office for Budget Responsibility. It also analyses the changing political economy of British capitalism's relationship to the European and global economies in the face of the global financial crisis, Brexit and COVID.
Additional text
This is an outstanding book, a major work of scholarship on a neglected subject. Through its detailed study of the OBR it makes an important argument about the nature and limits of technocratic governance. The attempt by the Truss Government to sideline the OBR (with disastrous results) makes the analysis more relevant than ever.
